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Thursday, April 30, 2009

TAKIN' THE HIGH ROAD

Everybody knows that marijuana has long roots that stretch straight to hell. Just ask Daddy Reagan: It’s WEED, not grass. Yes, it’s a fiery danger to us all.

That’s why alcohol and cigarettes are the legal elixirs, people — the good drugs, taxed to the hilt and available at a corner near you. Don’t even bother finding out for yourselves about marijuana’s worth. Would the government really lie? And medical benefits, our ass. Surely the dozen states that have legalized medical cannabis are just in it for the money. Huh? The American Medical Association signed on? What do physicians know?

We still don’t know why anybody would show up for this surely illicit Cleveland Marijuana March at “high” noon, Saturday, May 2. The decade-old march, in conjunction with festivities taking place in about 300 other cities across the globe, will begin at Public Square with the Weed Olympics, pagan-sounding though it is.

Some of the events: the Cottonmouth Challenge, in which contestants shove as many cotton balls as they can in their mouths; the Munchies, a race to see who can eat a bowl of Funions the fastest; and a bong relay that will have competitors putting their heads on a bat, spinning around and then seeing who can roll the fastest joint (with simulated ingredients, of course). Silly stoners, spinning makes you dizzy!

But the event isn’t all merriment and silliness, apparently. After gathering reinforcements (last year’s rain-stymied event drew 500), the revelers will head out on a march around the Justice Center, then end up, sometime around 2 p.m., at a party in Huntington Park, with activists, party games and music from Zoo Station, the Groove Prophets and Jim & E Roc.Laura Kosa-Thomas, a 36-year-old from Lorain, is in her second year organizing the event as president of the Ohio Cannabis Society. She’s also founder of Pot TV.

“As soon as you mention I smoke it, people instantly think you’re stupid,” says Kosa-Thomas, who notes how, with her medical problems, she could move to a state like Michigan that’s legalized medical cannabis. But what good would that do for Ohio? “I want to stay here and fight. It’s ridiculous. Alcohol can ruin a marriage, a life, somebody else’s life, but I can smoke an ounce and not do that. I might eat up everything in the house and go to sleep, but that’s it.”

Go to clevelandohiomarijuanamarch.ning.com for more information and to tap into the local activist scene. And if you go to Saturday’s march, be careful — weed’s still illegal. And thank goodness. Who needs all those taxes? — Dan Harkins